


The Vodka

by CorruptLimerence



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Dancing together, Drinking together is great to talk about trauma, Existential Crisis, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Sexual Tension, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Wyatt Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-28
Updated: 2018-04-28
Packaged: 2019-04-28 22:16:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14458941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CorruptLimerence/pseuds/CorruptLimerence
Summary: Out of all the people in the world, he had been the one to understand, not only the loss but what it was like to stare into a bottle of vodka for a friend. She didn't have to crack the skin on her face smiling for him, didn't have to brush off pain and hurt. She allowed him to see the ugliest of her. And he had already done the same.





	The Vodka

**Author's Note:**

> This is just my interpretation of what happened when Lucy and Flynn disappear behind that door in 2x06 and nobody knows what they get up to. My brain went to the obvious answer first, but then after an hour discussion with my close friend and beta reader we think it was more to this effect. Unlike last week, I can't say we got a hint in the promo, but god if it is like this I will be ecstatic.

Lucy Preston had always put herself into situations she could control. After her brush with death she had made that promise to herself. That’s what she told Wyatt in Germany circa 1944 and how she still felt at times on missions. The Lifeboat still instilled that panic, and by god ever since Rittenhouse upheaved her entire life she wanted control.

She was learning to find that control in other places, and within herself. 

But that was the old Lucy, the one groomed as a child. That was a Lucy that clung to whatever control she had. The one pausing in front of Garcia Flynn’s door had thrown caution to the wind, tossed off the restraints and was going where oblivion could not touch her.

They hadn’t shared imaginary moments in that car, and Flynn reaching out to connect with her, albeit badly at first, touched her. Out of all the people in the world, he had been the one to understand, not only the loss but what it was like to stare into a bottle of vodka for a friend.

She didn't have to crack the skin on her face smiling for him, didn't have to brush off pain and hurt. She allowed him to see the ugliest of her. And he had already done the same. 

Before she could change her mind she knocked lightly on the door. At the moment she bit her lip the heavy set metal door opened. In the diminished lighting of the bunker the shadows cast by his angular features were exquisite. His surprised glance flickered to her from on high, he had almost a foot on her and his frame was substantially bigger. The warmth from that frame ebbed to her body casting a relaxed balm in the unforgivingly cold metal environment. They gave each other a friendly, and knowing smirk, but not before a small look flickered to her lips.

She gestured to the vodka in her grasp and ducked through the door jamb into his room. She would not let her customary overthinking mar this moment or what she was trying to do. She feigned confidence and easiness when exhibiting the vodka.

Garcia Flynn shut the door and cast her a grin that she had known over centuries, the one that was slightly mocking and showed his dimples.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?” He asked.

“You wanted to get to know me. I want to know you.” Lucy gestured to herself. “And we can continue our conversation from the car in 1936.”

“Making me wait 82 years to continue a conversation?” He teased her. 

Lucy wasn’t sure what had happened back in the Dust Bowl of the Great Depression but it made her toss back her head and laugh. Something had unknotted their strained coexistence. Seeing him genuinely content, tapping his foot to the real King of Blues, hearing him hum the tune. 

“What can I say? I like to keep them waiting” Lucy returned.

He gave a gruff chortle, and went to the other side of the room. While his back was turned and his shoulder blades hunched to look in a makeshift bookshelf Lucy took the opportunity to absorb her surroundings. The same grated strip of light crossed the south facing wall as it did in all the bunks. Sunlight would have come down to bathe the cot across the room in light. Instead artificial bulbs lit the tidy and neatly placed personal belongings. 

Flynn returned with the glasses more suited to whiskey, but it would have to do. He did her the courtesy of uncorking the bottle and pouring them equal amount. She sat on the cot, noting that it too was neatly made. For a woman with a carefully upkept memory she easily forgot he was eastern european special forces and NSA agent. He would have been disciplined into a tidy living. He hadn’t broken out of prison with much, but some of Mason’s library had been co-opted and displayed on his makeshift shelf.

“And the getting to know each other deal,” She pretended to scold him, finger pointing at his face, “I’ll know if you use my journal as a reference point. If you try that BS I’ll know.”

Flynn seated himself next her, their arms barely touching. He took a swig of his vodka and spoke with the strange gravelly voice she found to be more and more welcome:“Even with Vodka?”

Lucy snickered. “Even if I’m drunk and it’s about a Fisher Price Playhouse set that Amy and I played in.”

He raised an eyebrow as if to say: I have to know now! When Lucy didn't Grant him access to those highly guarded secrets he nodded.

“You have my word Professor Preston.” He feigned solemnity in the bow of his head. Maybe she had learnt to decipher the expression of his eyes because he was serious. Again, that same look from the 50s when he threatened to erase her.

He would keep his promise to keep details of her diary out and she believed him for the same reason that he had kidnapped her and couldn’t bring himself to harm her. This reason threaded through the moment she knew he couldn’t bring himself to erase her. It as the same reason that there was one single sentence not uttered between them on the last mission in that hotel room. 

I care about you.

“I’m guessing you don’t want to hear about the journal then.” HE cocked his head. Lucy had been taking a sip to find her throat constricting. She coughed like a teenage tasting vodka for the first time unlike the proud academic she was.

“That is not what the Vodka is for.” She waggled her glass, “and besides, I feel like I’m at a disadvantage. There isn’t much of a risk for you if we discuss me or my past and future.”

“Is this an interrogation?” He teased.

“I told you, getting to know each other.” Lucy took a deep gulp of vodka and finished her first glass, the heat seared down her throat pleasantly. They both stared at their empty glasses. She poured the next round which was even fuller than the conservative amount Flynn had distributed. 

“Careful.” Flynn gave her a careful smile, “You are tiny, a little will go along way. This bottle would take you forever to finish.”

“And what? Mr 10 foot tall special forces? Is this barely enough for you to get a buzz?” She lulled her head over, feeling the warmth and tingle of the vodka working its magic through her system.

He laughed roughly. “If someone could pick me up and move me out of the way I would worry.” 

Lucy felt a host of pleasure slither up her spine at the memory of being pressed up against is back, he had moved her from the sleeper agent so quickly that she must have weighed nothing to him. The hard plane of his chest against her back made a human shield, she hadn’t thanked him for that.

“Thanks for that...by the way.” Lucy gulped down another mouthful of vodka. Okay, yes, effects were definitely taking over, she turned her head to look into his dark eyes under a straight set brows only to feel lightheaded. 

“Lucy if we sat and thanked each other for the ways we’ve saved each other we’d be here all night.” He said graciously.

She gave a half nod and swallowed more vodka. His gaze worked from the profile of her face down the slope of her shoulders to rest on the glass in her hand. She didn’t hate it; it was the lighting of consecutive matches down her body. 

He stood suddenly and approached his bookshelf. 

What was that? Lucy not so subtly wiggled on the cot to get a better view, but his damn 10 foot tall body was in the way. 

He returned to her with two books. She had to give him credit where it was due. Flynn could ask her questions all he liked and he could hit landmines all night, but giving her books as points of character reference was poignant. 

“Let’s see what we have here.” Lucy downed the rest of the vodka and let the warmth sing in her veins and poured another. She adjusted her sitting position to lean on him and took out the books.

“1984, George Orwell.” She craned her neck up at his face, still not understanding why he seemed so bewildered that she was leaning on him. “Can’t say I’m surprised, given your general disestablishmentarianism.”

“That’s a big word for a five foot five historian on her third full glass of vodka”, he teased.

“I can just imagine the rebellious streak awakened in you when you read this in high school.” Lucy giggled.

“This is one of books banned in Eastern Europe, but after the Fall of the Soviet Union I did everything I could to get my hands on it.” She must have been tipsy because she lay her head on his sculpted shoulder and sighed. This felt comfortable.

“I did enjoy reading this one.” She hummed, letting her fingers trail over the UV printing on the stark red, black, and white paperback. “Okay, let’s see what’s next.”

She hummed Robert Johnson’s song. 

“Walt Disney Fairy Tales?” She murmured. “Why would you have-oh.”

A silence blanketed their closeness.

“Iris never liked the blood and sadness of the original stories, and god knows, she watched those movies to death. I used to try doing the voices, and she begged to hear Mulan and Cinderella almost every night” His voice lost its playful edge and was cold but not unruffled. Under the steady thrum of his words came a strangled feeling. She recognized the stopper on a bottle of emotions. Once uncorked, the contents couldn’t return to their container. She gave him the rest of the vodka in her glass. 

“You must miss her very much.” Lucy barely expelled the whisper from her mouth, the territory was fragile and terrifying. She knew that chasm of jagged pain tearing right down the middle of your body.

“Every moment of everyday.” He stared at the bottom the empty glass now. Lucy did what she would have done for anyone, she reached out and squeezed his hands. His eyebrows turned up in surprise, a vulnerable look softening his severe features. 

“I understand,” Lucy whispered into the heated air separating them.

His large hand squeezed back.

“I know.” He murmured. But an astonishing thing happened to him: his grief transformed to determination like a flint to fire. It was a look that promised to tear down the Earth to get his wife and child back. It was contagious. “But don’t give up hope yet, we can still bring them back.”

Lucy gave a weak smile and poured them another round. “Here’s to hoping.”

>.<

“My mother pushed me on Standford.” Lucy emphatically waved her arms standing on the cot. She was a roman on the Senate floor voicing her opinion and Garcia Flynn seemed to enjoy the fire in her eyes. “But I didn’t want it, and everytime I tried to bring it up she would just guilt me.”

“A mother? Guilting? Hard to believe.” Flynn hid a laugh behind his hands.

“No! No.” Lucy lightly whacked his arm, “You don’t get it, I mean, she would lace into me about the price of my education, and what she had prepared me for. Blah blah blah. But was it so bad to just want a teaching job where I wanted? God and it was probably all a Rittenhouse ploy.”

Lucy dragged her fingers down her face, remarking on how numb her fingertips were.   
“No, no.” Flynn laughed and pried her hands from her face. “If you talk about your mother you will go absolutely crazy.”

“Who else am I gonna be mad with about my Rittenhouse mom grooming me as a child?” She tore her hands away to continue gesturing. “How much of me was just made by them, and how much is me? What is the use of choice if the future is set in stone.”

“Lucy, we work in a time machine, we see how one thing shifts the course of history. If you had followed in her footsteps you would have been what they made you.” Flynn held up a finger, “But you didn’t, and you changed history, you created a timeline where you chose.”

>.<

“Mason must’ve been been listening to it in the common area.” Lucy ran back into the bunker room like a child after pranking a teacher. 

Flynn was equally to blame, he had just taken a dive into his room with a record player. His hands salvaged the set by holding it aloft like a newborn simba.

Shuffling the record player onto the table they two managed to accomplish plugging it in, despite their varying stages of drunkness. Lucy more so than Flynn, the man’s alcohol tolerance was possibly elvish circa Return of the King. 

“Lucy!” Flynn reeled backwards laughing and pointed at the name at the bottom of the record.

“Engineered by Lando Calrissian.” Lucy slurred. The two broke into cackles. “Put it on! Put it on!”

The two waited with baited breath for the track to start. Robert Johnson’s voice whirred to life. They nearly loss their minds when they heard Mason’s excited YEAH in the background. To think they were both at that back table in the room listening to this song recording. Lucy hazy remembered looking at Flynn’s face stretched wide into a smile, one she would keep close to her. They tapped their feet and kept their distance, but oh did they want to dance then.

“God, it’s a shame we needed to keep quiet during this-”Lucy mused.

Flynn grabbed her hands and spun her around the room. They were unrefined and loud no doubt, but fun. They locked hands on their forearms and whirled like school children trying to make each other dizzy. He made sure to twirl as many times as possible, Lucy attempted ro reciprocate but there was a height problem. 

The world careened, her limbs jello, and the the music sang around her. The dreadful future that sat like a weight in her stomach blurred out of focus, the camera lens of her life sharpening to this one moment. Fireworks danced in her limbs, and she stumbled. The floor spun close to her right side but a pair of hands looped around her waist. 

Thankfully, Flynn was there and caught her.

>.<

“My wife was catholic.” He confessed to her. “I didn’t really believe much, but I went for her. I used to be so reluctant on Sunday mornings, wrangling our daughter to church, the pomp, the ceremony.”

Robert Johnson’s voice echoed in the small room, his deal with the devil all the more relevant all the moment. It cast a melancholy taste to their interaction. Time travel did, at times, feel like the deal with the devil. In the operatic theatre of her mind his severe features under a virgin mary were dramatic and desperate. He also looked brooding and byronic but Lucy could not be held accountable for the conjurations of her drunk brain.

Lucy was imploring. “And?”

“Now I wish I had that comfort of those times and the belief she did. To think that someone out there was looking out for us and has a plan for our greater good?” He shrugged and drank. “And now I can’t help but feeling that we are the only ones with the plan, and sometimes not always for the greater good.”

Maybe it was the vodka, but she had to repress a: wow that’s so wise. Lucy understood and was vaguely angry that he had drank as much as her and he wasn’t nearly as clumsy. She had bruised her knees getting up not two minutes ago and was busy rubbing them through the fabric of her jeans.

“Who is to say anything we do is for the better, we’re playing god, but hell, we have no credentials.” Lucy nodded vigorously. Thank god she wasn’t slurring yet. “Changing history to specification isn’t an exact science, there’s no way of knowing if we should be touching it.”

“Are you a woman of faith?” He asked softly.

She gave a non-committal shrug. “Wyatt asked me that once…” Flynn might have tensed up, she wasn’t sure. “He was surprised that I said yes.”

He gave her that puppy eye stare that could only urge her to tell the man more.

“But is it so bad to be uncynical and wish for what your wife could believe?” But Lucy let out a dramatic breath of air to fling a lock of hair from her face. “I mean, time travel has a way of eroding faith, especially when you’re pulling the strings. But Rufus is a man of...science, so is Jiya, not a man, but a person of science. Wyatt has lost a lot of people, and they can’t find it in them to believe. But maybe I'm missed a memo, and I shouldn't still believe, not when I'm the one saving Salem Puritans and changing things.”

“Trauma has a way of either attracting or putting off faith.” Garcia Flynn said. Lucy scooted closer to him on the cot to examine him. “It serves a comfort to believe, or want to believe at times.”

“What about you, Garcia Flynn? Now after everything?” 

“I tried confession a couple of times since my family was taken for me.” He shook his head. “Didn’t have the desired effects, what could a priest possible to do for me?”

“Maybe it's not what a priest or some god or another can do for you,” Lucy mused all close to him, “but maybe it's the comfort you deserve.”

>.<

“Please, please, please just tell me that you’re going to go back to your family after this is over.” Lucy kept the hysterical note out of her voice. “When you told me that you wouldn’t it broke my heart.”

They stood opposite to one another in the cramped room. Their voices were barely kept above a hush, somehow as if speaking the emotions loudly would make the words turn to poison in their mouths. 

“I don’t have a choice Lucy.” His voice was viperous and low. “Do you really think you can go back to a life with your family after living with their deaths? When they don’t share your experiences that have isolated you? Would they even recognize you?”

“So you would bring them back just to abandon them?!” Lucy knew she shouldn’t be asking these questions, but well, they knew the ugliest of each other already. What was one more rattling and charged argument through time. 

 

“I’m not abandoning them!” His voice rose, but again, Lucy didn’t care. God, she couldn’t contemplate a world where he would be given the providence to see his family and refuse to live with them.

“But-”

“But what Lucy?” Flynn confronted her. Even within two seconds of knowing each other they seemed to be throwing their harsh truths at one another. The tradition continued it seemed.

Lucy held back her tears and let her forehead collapse into the dense surface of his chest. Her fists knotted into the cotton of his shirt.

“You deserve to be happy too.” Lucy snarled. 

Her shoulders heated when his palms connected with the fabric. Garcia Flynn made sure they had a safe distance.

Wyatt dove headfirst into a life with his wife. If Flynn, a victim of Rittenhouse, brought them back and considered it amoral to do what Wyatt did, how could Lucy possibly compartmentalise. Was Wyatt wrong, or was Flynn out of his mind from grief. 

To know that a man like Flynn would lose his family, could get them back but keep himself from happiness. It was a selflessness which acted as venom to its weilder. It was a damning ache between her ribs to know that he did it out of altruism only, and that their lives took precedence over what he needed. 

It was, after all, what it took to make himself the villain. 

But she watched his lips part, tried to forget to the hands on her shoulders, and watched every muscle in his body tense

“That’s not up to me to decide.” he whispered. 

>.<

“I was voted class clown you know?” Flynn nudged her. “Which means that it’s my job to keep everyone laughing.”

“I asked why you antagonized Wyatt and Rufus?” Lucy nudged him. “Not if you were funny.”

“So you agree that I’m funny?” he waggled his eyebrows.

“Occasionally.” Lucy conceded. 

“Now we have no choice but to agree that I am way more fun on missions than Wyatt.” Flynn goaded her.

Her giggles stifled into to hurried shushes. “He’ll hear you.”

“It’s alright, he’s here for his tactical knowledge, not his jokes.” Flynn joked. “I only antagonize Rufus because his level of humor threatens me.”

>.<

Somewhere between drunk and stupid drunk they were laughing uncontrollably, the feeling of it liberated the two of them inside out. Their ribs almost cracked from the action of giggling, and it made no difference to them if someone had heard, there was already enough of that callousness going around. 

Her head had been on his shoulder the whole time and it was almost like there should have been a TV in front of them to prompt there laughter. But there wasn’t, just each other. 

Lucy gregariously looked up at Flynn. 

He should have more to smile about, she decided. Grief was a knife lodged in his back, remove it and a teasing, intelligent person could be resurrected. His smiles had hit her throughout the evening, burrowing an undiluted sensation down her back and legs. It wired a frenzy into her blood, its heat drove her to hold his hand.

She realised somewhere along the lines of their escapades she had discovered he was handsome. Not in all american superhero way, but a handsome that could slot into different centuries, the cut of his nose, the lines of his dimples, the slope of his cheekbones. A Roman coin, a Golden Age Illustrator subject, and Baroque sculpture. 

Her hand went to feel the curiosity of his hair. Confirmation: it was soft. The tips of her fingers traced his temple, trailing the line of the cheekbone. Lucy wasn’t beyond noticing that the laughter had died and that Garcia Flynn held his breath. Maybe he was drunk and only hiding it better since, like a cat, he leaned into the touch. 

Lucy sat on her haunches, shamelessly looking at him. Flynn watched her looking at him, lower lip parted, dark eyes lowered and staring from beneath heavy eyelashes. 

His right hand had grounded itself above her knee, the proximity caught her breath. Lucy met his eyes, hands cupping his face. Her kneeling form on the cot took the same space as his upper body sitting. She imagined what it was be like to measure this chest to chest, the warmth of his legs would be welcome beneath her, around her.   
The remnants of her sobriety urged to pull back. Which was too late, Flynn wasn’t much of a passive participant. His squared hand had sailed to cup the round of her chin in his fingers, his breath feathering over her mouth and nose. His face tilted, angling just right, anticipation wound his muscles tense. She mirrored him, her grip might have been painful but he hardly noticed. 

God, she may have demanded to know what he wanted out of her, but she wanted to kiss him. She wanted to kiss him until both of their mouths bruised from pressure. She wanted his hands threaded around her waist as he lifted her up. 

The press of his fingertips was to make certain Lucy was here, and she wasn’t going to disappear. If a small note of desperation found itself into his hands his face was determined, his eyes set on her mouth. 

If you go down this path, you won’t be able to change it.

This alarm bell reserved for work clanged in her mind. 

Lucy froze.

The sensation of urgency filled her crown to toe. It only kicked into gear when they had royally fucked up in the past and there was no chance of returning to the moment. This felt like one of these moments, only that the future was unwritten and she was ready to dive into something. This would have reminded the old Lucy of the car filling up with water.

Knowing the nature of control was fleeting and rare at best, a calmness washed over Lucy after the cold of urgency abated. She luxuriated in the touch of his hands on her, the look of reverence and the absolutely hunger look in his face. 

Her face sunk to his shoulder instead, turning into the palm of his hand. A tense breath brushed her neck, his arms slung around her to pull her close. They must have been too frustrated to do anything but because Flynn and Lucy parted from their closeness soon afterwards. 

“We should get you to bed.” Flynn conceded. 

“Yeah, we should.”

Nobody moved. This felt destined, comfortable, right even. 

“The mothership might jump tomorrow, you’ll need your strength.” Flynn was the first to get off the cot. “Come, I’ll make sure you get there.”

“Afraid I’ll get lost?” Lucy teased.

“More like fall over, I’ve seen how clumsy you can be, which is why I lowered you from the Lifeboat in 1936.” He said casually. An irked part of Lucy, she couldn’t determine how big of a part, was irked that he was so casual. Her hair was mussed, her cheeks red, clearly still off balance from being so close to kissing him. Just because she had stopped herself didn't mean she still didn't want to explore the sensation of his mouth on hers. 

But he was right, she would fall over.

“Fine.” Lucy stood up and made a motion that yelled: Ta-Da! Flynn smirked and gently guided the body attached to the elbow he had in hand out of the room. 

Lucy and Flynn giddily sniggered their way into the common area, stumbled a couple of times. 

“Did you keep my vodka in your room?” Lucy’s mouth was open feigning horror.

“Yes I’m trying to come between you and your best friend Vodka. I’m hoping that you can share custody for a while.”

“Obviously that poor baby bottle of vodka is gonna be on the shelf, you’re not cracking that thing open again.” Lucy kicked off her shoes to ungracefully shrug into the couch bed. “And don’t take care of me, you’re clearly just as drunk and I will not stand for this charade.”

“You’re clearly not, you’re lying down at the moment.” Flynn chuckled and put a bracing hand on a nearby chair. “Besides I told you, five foot five academics can’t knock back all that much.”

Lucy snickered into the pillow. 

“Sh.” Flynn put a finger to his mouth. “Just go the hell to sleep.”

Lucy waved him off, stil laughing. “I’m trying but you’re still here.”

“Okay, okay, I’m leaving.” He inched away. 

Lucy watched him get back to his bunker. A fountain of effervescent and potent emotions were swimming under the overwhelming amount of alcohol. Sleep was not far off for Lucy Preston or Garcia Flynn.

But it was a thing far from Wyatt’s. Light sleep meant he hadn’t been quite resting throughout the night. He had been returning from the washroom when he caught the two swaying from wall to wall in the hallway. No doubt while snorting and laughing Lucy and Flynn would have missed the door down the hall creaking open. 

A corrosive sensation pained him right in the chest, as if someone had dropped kicked him from fifty feet. He hated it, and some part of him was deliberately and industrially upkeeping the lie that Lucy and him were okay. It was the one lie that kept his world together. This lie lived in the same part of him that still grieved for a dead wife even though she slept right next to him.

Hearing Flynn and Lucy talk through the walls wound his nerves so tight he might snap. Maybe Flynn, their house trained time terrorist, was right. Could you go back? Should you? Was it up to you to live a present of someone else’s past. Would they even recognize you? 

Never had Wyatt felt further from Jessica, and never further from Lucy.


End file.
